February 29, 2004

Some polls show John Kerry is ahead of George Bush, apart from the running mate question. This poll shows adding John Edwards as a running mate boosts Kerry’s standings in a matchup with Bush and Dick Cheney. From Salon:
Both Kerry and Edwards are basically tied with Bush in head-to-head matchups in a [...]


February 28, 2004

There is some pretty funny stuff (but sadly, most of it is true.) From georgewbush.org (the folks who brought us whitehouse.org):
Bush on the Economy
Bush on the Environment


Veteran Gregory D. Foster, professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, was a West Point graduate and infantry company commander with the Americal Division in Vietnam. His take on Bush and war from the Christian Science Monitor:
The growing furor over President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service – or lack [...]


With a song. What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth by Willie Nelson:

There’s so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us
They’re gonna? kill us
So we gotta? kill them first
But I remember a [...]


February 27, 2004

As discussed here previously, the ACLU has a list of communities that have passed resolutions denouncing the Bush/Republican-backed Patriot Act as unconstitutional.
Michael Moore has a good page with a summary of the Patriot Act and more resources.
This week, it was Dallas, Texas’ turn to denounce the Patriot Act. From the Star Telegram:
After [...]


February 26, 2004

Diane Rehm had a powerful show this morning with guest David Shipler, author of “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”:
You see them almost everywhere. They serve your coffee, clear your table, or clean your office. The working poor come from practically all walks of life. they are white, black, Latino and Asian. Author David Shipler [...]


Today in history, from the Boston Globe:
One year ago: Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Iraq was showing new signs of real cooperation, but President Bush was dismissive, predicting Saddam Hussein would try to “fool the world one more time.”
and now a story from the Washington Post:
Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix argued [...]


February 25, 2004

Bush’s economic advisors said it’s a good thing that American jobs are being outsourced to India, among other places. Like John Edwards, I say let’s outsource this administration instead. From Wired Magazine:
…Seventy miles up the Northeast Corridor is a politician who is asking that very question – and who, in the process, has [...]


I’ve mostly stayed away from this issue because I feel like it’s being brought up by Karl Rove in an election year to distract the nation from the failures of the Bush Administration. But when Uncle Walter speaks on the subject, we’ve got to listen. From Walter Cronkite in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
…Whatever the [...]


Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan says we need to cut Social Security because of the huge deficit Bush has run up – the massive spending by the Bush Adminsitration on behalf of the wealthy cuts even deeper into the pockets of the middle class. Another in a long line of Bush’s campaign promises to bite [...]


February 24, 2004

Check out this compilation of independent media resources at Goodwriters.net.


Bush’s rush to a war for all the wrong reasons has led to so much suffering, it’s difficult to comment adequately. That the American media is not telling the stories of these men and women and their familes is reprehensible. From the UK’s Channel 4:
…In a dark corner of Andrews Air Force base [...]


Shades of Bill Clinton. From Forbes Magazine:
Investors have done much better when Democrats occupy the White House.…In recent decades stock market investors have done much better when Democrats occupy the White House. Since 1927, stock returns adjusted for inflation have averaged five percentage points a year higher under Democratic presidents than under Republicans, according [...]


There was a public outcry over the invasion of privacy inherent in TIA (Total Information Awareness), so what did Congress do? Played a shell game, but now once you find it, it’s harder to lift the shell. From the AP:
The government is still financing research to create powerful tools that could mine millions [...]


February 23, 2004

Here’s a neat site put out by NOW, including some new Bushisms. The Truth About George


From Molly Ivins:
…we’re in for a terrific two weeks if both Kerry and John Edwards do the issue stuff they’re both well-placed to do. Kerry has a strong, well-thought-out health-care plan, and he should make it his signature issue – and put some passion into it, if he’s got any. Edwards, with his populist riff, [...]


Bush’s mother Barbara told Barbara Walters she’s pro-choice. Now from the New York Daily News:
First Daughter Barbara Bush may be devoted to her father, but not necessarily to his party.
Recently, a source asked the 21-year-old Barbara if she was a Republican. “She made a funny face and rolled her eyes,” reports our snitch. [...]


February 22, 2004

This is long, but I’ll post it all here so there’s another internet record of it. Here is the text from the speech delivered at New School University on February 5:
Thank you for inviting me to speak at this timely conference on the Uses and Misuses of Fear in our political system in America.
It [...]


Bush keeps bringing Christianity front and center. Well, OK, what would Jesus do? Let’s see, he said: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the [...]


February 20, 2004

You know things aren’t going well for Bush when that bastion of fair and balanced reporting, Fox News, reports that he is sitting at a lowly 48% approval in their latest job ratings poll. And Bush and John Kerry running are neck and neck in their latest presidential race poll.


More than 60 of Bill Clinton’s judicial candidates were blocked by Republicans who controlled the Senate when he was president. Yet Republicans use the excuse that Democrats have blocked a handful of George W. Bush’s most radical anti-Constitutional judicial appointees as justification for Bush bypassing Congress and placing these rogue judges directly on the [...]


How about a break from the bad news. A new Bush joke I received:
While walking in the Rose Garden one day, George “Dubya” Bush is struck by a large wheel of cheese that had fallen out the cargo door of SwissAir, flight 119. Sadly, George does not make it. His [...]


Life with Bush getting you down? Tune into The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central and you just might feel a little better. Some recent clips:
About a Boy      Beat the Press
Meet the Prez      You Not Served
Kay Pasa?      The State of the Union
Facing the Imaginable      Thanksgiving Surprise
and the [...]


Since this article was published, the FEC voted to restrict 527 groups to hard money in their efforts to oust Bush. Ironically, it was two Republicans on the commission who stood up for free speech, but they were outnumbered. Chairman Bradley A. Smith said, “If Republicans think they can win by silencing their [...]


Even in a best case scenario for the Democratic candidate, Bush will still have twice as much money as his opponent. All the fat cats have been sending Bush thank you letters with campaign donations tucked inside, in appreciation for all the gifts Bush has provided for them at our expense. Providing tax [...]


The other day, I had a conversation woman who was parroting Rush Limbaugh lines. There isn’t much to say in the face of such disinformation except, Don’t you ever read the news? Just by chance, I hit upon something that made an impression on her. I said, “You’re pro-choice, aren’t you?” [...]


February 18, 2004

From the New York Times:
The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad, a group of about 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement issued today.
The sweeping charges were later discussed [...]


From USA Today:
Likely Voters (Registered Voters):
Edwards 54 (49)
Bush 44 (48)
Kerry 55 (51)
Bush 43 (46)
I sure hope all those likely voters register and vote. To register to vote in your state, see Your vote matters.


That hill of reality that the Bush Administration has been hiding behind a facade of lies, lies, and more lies, has grown into a mountain that’s now threatening to go landslide. From MSNBC:
President Bush edged away Wednesday from his own administration’s prediction that the U.S. economy will add 2.6 million new jobs before the [...]


From the Baltimore Sun:
The old man looks down at the grave, so fresh it has no marker and the squares of sod have not yet grown together. He has come to visit his only grandson.
Rayburn Seeley last set foot on this spot Jan. 22, the day Army Spc. Jeremy S. Seeley was buried with [...]


From the Washington Post:
Two-year-old Jada Suell tumbled out of the car and ran ahead of everyone – her grandmother, her mother, her cousins and her 4-year-old sister, Jakayla – toward the grave of Joseph Dewayne Suell.
“Dada,” said the little girl. In the Sunday afternoon quiet of Cedar Grove cemetery, her toddler voice reverberated like a [...]


February 17, 2004

From Salon:
…The surprising absence of relevant documents over the weekend may add credence to the accusation raised six years ago by a retired Texas Air National Guard officer who claims aides to Bush went through his military file in 1997 and removed anything that would have been embarrassing for Bush as he prepared to run [...]


February 16, 2004

Another great column from Joe Klein in Time Magazine:
“That’s an interesting question,” the President said, having been asked on Meet the Press whether Iraq was a war of choice or of necessity. “Please elaborate on that a little bit. A war of choice or necessity?” It was as if George W. Bush had never considered [...]


From Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
By the time NBC’s Tim Russert finished interviewing President Bush last Sunday, viewers were either frightened or flabbergasted or both.
Bush announced himself a “war president” 70 times in an hour.Frightened because Bush – announcing himself a “war president” – used variations of the words “war,” “terror,” “kill” and “danger” [...]


February 14, 2004

A good presentation of Bush’s statements vs. his actions on a number of issues is here.


February 13, 2004

From Inc. Magazine:
…on the evening of Jan. 6, the SBA [Small Business Administration] announced that 7(a) loans were going on infdefinite “holiday.” Through the program, the agency’s most popular, the SBA backs loans for thousands of small businesses that have a hard time raising money through conventional means… The unprecedented shutdown was stunning given [...]


From Reuters:
U.S. consumer sentiment took an unexpectedly sharp fall in early February as Americans turned cautious over the economy, a survey showed on Friday.
The University of Michigan’s preliminary reading of consumer sentiment tumbled to 93.1 in February from January’s final reading of 103.8, which was its highest level in over three years, according to [...]


From the American Prospect:
Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14 newspaper column. The two officials told investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might potentially jeopardize her ability to [...]


February 12, 2004

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Evidence that the White House doctored pre-war intelligence reports for public consumption may dash the Bush administration’s hopes of passing the buck to intelligence agencies for the apparent absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
A Knight Ridder Newspapers report says the version of the National Intelligence Estimate that the White [...]


February 11, 2004

More fairy tales from Bush – but this time the American worker was completely dropped from the story. We have now officially become commodities of trade. Under Bush, the Constitution is being scrapped for a one liner – how rich can the rich get? We have a governnment by the corporation for [...]


February 10, 2004

From the Christian Science Monitor:
Some political leaders study economists Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, some John Kenneth Galbraith. President George Bush is clearly a student of Charles Ponzi.
Ponzi was the 1920s con man who convinced residents of Boston’s North End, among others, to invest in a plan to exploit the difference in value between [...]


From the book “Building a Better Bush” by Paul Waldman in Salon:
…The popular perception is that George W. Bush is just a “regular guy”… But this image is a persona, carefully constructed over the years to deal with one of the key difficulties facing members of the Bush dynasty. After all, we are talking about [...]


February 9, 2004

Up to date statistics are here.


February 8, 2004

From Buzzflash:
“To my knowledge, there has never been an administration that has been more hostile to women?s equality [than the Bush administration], to reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right, and has acted on that hostility. They certainly have pursued abstinence-only sex education programs and gutted and gotten rid of comprehensive sex education. They?ve pursued [...]


From Kevin Phillips, author of “American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush” in the Los Angeles Times:
…Ironically, the Bush family’s century of involvement in oil, armaments and global intrigue has never been at the center of the national debate since the Bushes starting running for president in [...]


February 6, 2004

From Cato:
“Eleven days after Congress at last approved a budget for the current fiscal year, which began in October, George Bush presented Congress with a $2.4 trillion budget for the next,” according to The Economist. “Think of it as a campaign brochure, complete with glossy pictures of the president bringing relief to the elderly, restoring [...]


From Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times:
The central sickness of human history is the notion that the ends justify the means, and it has disastrously gripped political movements from left to right and from the secular to the religious…
This profoundly immoral posture has been embraced by President Bush in justifying his preemptive war against [...]


February 5, 2004

From Glynn Wilson in The Progressive Southerner:
The result of an investigation into George W. Bush’s lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug [...]


February 4, 2004

A great cartoon from Rob Rogers.


A great cartoon from Slate.com.


February 3, 2004

Sometimes a picture – or an animation – is worth a thousand words.
On Scalia & Cheney: Duck Season from Mark Fiore
On Leakgate: Get Stupid from Too Stupid to be President


Thank goodness for Rep. Henry Waxman, he’s on the case again. From CBS News:
There are new allegations about how well U.S. tax dollars have been used in Iraq. It’s just the latest controversy surrounding Halliburton, the Texas company once run by Vice President Cheney – and the U.S. military’s biggest contractor in Iraq.
The investigation [...]


February 2, 2004

From John Dean at FindLaw.com:
…On January 21 a group of former intelligence officers wrote to Congress requesting, according to the New York Times, “an immediate inquiry” into the disclosure. As the Times noted, “[i]t is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition Congress on a matter like this.”
In addition, the same day, Representative Rush Holt [...]


From Knight-Ridder:
January was the second deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in May, according to a review of military and news reports.
A roadside bomb near the city of Kirkuk on Saturday killed three U.S. soldiers, bringing the total combat deaths for January to 40.
The [...]


USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll Results:
Matchups:

KERRY (53) BUSH (46)
EDWARDS (49) BUSH (48)
CLARK (47) BUSH (50)
DEAN (46) BUSH (52)

Issues:

Bush Approval Ratings: APPROVE: 49 DISAPPROVE: 48
Bush’s Economic Ratings: APPROVE: 43 DISAPPROVE: 54
Foreign Affairs: APPROVE: 46 DISAPPROVE: 51
IRAQ “Situation”: APPROVE: 46 DISAPPROVE: 53
Health Care: APPROVE: 35 DISAPPROVE: 57

Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings:

The Democratic Party: FAV: 59 UNFAV: 34
The Republican Party: FAV: 48 UNFAV: [...]


February 1, 2004

These are the people pulling Bush’s strings. From a review of “An End to Evil” by David Frum and Richard Perle on Salon:
…Here are some of the authors’ policy recommendations:

Preparing to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea, after moving our troops out of range of their artillery and missiles.
Taking direct [...]



Reference
Recommended Sites
Quotations
Women

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got to not forget to laugh." ~ Katharine Hepburn

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." ~ Maya Angelou

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." ~ Edith Wharton

"Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life." ~ Sophia Loren

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

"Woman must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"Feminism is and always has been about women acting in the world as full-fledged citizens, as real participants in the world of ideas and policy and history." ~ Susan Faludi

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it." ~ Bella Abzug

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives." ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Nature

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

Freedom

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

Truth

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Find things that shine and move toward them." ~ Mia Farrow

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abuse of Power

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." ~ Russell Baker

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Violence

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hypocrisy

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics." ~ Barry Goldwater

"Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." ~ Hllary Rodham Clinton

Politics

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility." ~ Doris Lessing

Pretended Patriotism

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
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